What's The Matter, Skip?

The finest documentary of all time was aired last night on Australian television - A searing expose into Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo.

Things learnt:

Kangaroos don’t make a "tsk tsk tsk" sound. You can, however, get them to chew so there’s some movement to dub the sound to, by feeding them rubber bands.

Kangaroos are dumber than a box of hair and cannot be trained. You know whenever you saw Sonny running up a hill and the kangaroo appeared to be following? Yeah, well that was a happy coincidence. It had just been let out of a hessian sack off camera and happened to be going in the same direction.

Kangaroos cannot really fly aeroplanes.

As kids, we all believed that Skippy was an excellent attack/guard kangaroo. What you see as an adult is someone off camera, throwing a marsupial at some actors.

Many skit shows have spoofed Skippy by exaggerating the level of comprehension implied by the one-way conversations the actors would have with the animal. Turns out - you can’t exaggerate them.

There were a lot of Skippies and the crew didn’t try too hard to match the replacement with the recently lost one. The thing would gain and lose weight, change colour and height, within a single scene.

And on a personal note:

Every kid who has ever been to any wildlife sanctuary in Australia, has met “the real Skippy”. Just as every kid has been secretly thrilled when Skippy has grown tired of a day’s worth of attention from little children, and has gone mental.*

*Tony Martin captures this beautifully in Lolly Scramble